


Bloody Mary

by Sekah



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Real Person Fiction, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Church of England, England (Country), Established Chris Hemsworth/Tom Hiddleston, Established Relationship, Historical, M/M, Marian Persecutions, Protestant Reformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 19:43:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sekah/pseuds/Sekah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took another hour for Euerson to be pronounced dead. As the peasantry disbanded, returning to their huts, Hemsworth stayed. Until the sun was low on the horizon, he stayed, cursing his own weakness. A brave man would have pronounced himself a Calvinist and been carted off to jail. Euerson was a hero.</p><p> </p><p>Hemsworth stared at the burnt circle in the middle of the square, and felt the claustrophobia of hell closing in around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloody Mary

Burning at the stake is never a quick death. It takes hours for the smoke or the flames to do their work. The burns start at your feet, and entwine over your body, your desperate screams witnessed by notaries contracted by the queen herself.

 

The queen herself, Chris Hemsworth thought, spitting sideways and watching the thirty-first accused man of the Marian Persecutions, Edward Euerson, a tradesman who refused to recant his faith, writhe in agony as the fire licked at the long strings of boils popping inside his twisting flesh. He sobbed weakly, his body charred, reddened meat. The square smelt like burning hair and an overdone roast.

 

Some little boys jeered, but unlike the hanging of a criminal, the adults in the crowd were somber. Euerson had always been generous and fair. He was well-liked in this town. The litigators who came from London to try him were outsiders in an insular village. Their fancy words, Protestant Dissenter, meant nothing even to the Catholic gentlewomen who had resisted Henry VIII's reformation.

 

Hemsworth felt cowardly, watching a man die for a crime that he too was culpable for. Euerson slumped, passed out, the agony or smoke finally overpowering him. He trembled still, as if having a fit.

 

He no longer looked human.

 

It took another hour for Euerson to be pronounced dead. As the peasantry disbanded, returning to their huts, Hemsworth stayed. Until the sun was low on the horizon, he stayed, cursing his own weakness. A brave man would have pronounced himself a Calvinist and been carted off to jail. Euerson was a hero.

 

Hemsworth stared at the burnt circle in the middle of the square, and felt the claustrophobia of hell closing in around him.

 

As the last rays of sun touched the treetops with gold, long fingers wrapped around his wrist and a fond hand tilted his chin until his gaze met lucid green eyes.

 

“Come home,” Tom said.

 

Home. An hour’s ride away. Two huts, two bachelors, two friends. Another deceit. He couldn’t face it, and almost told Tom that. It was the look of worry and pain reforming Tom’s elegant features that changed his mind.

 

Broad shoulders bowed in sullenly, Chris followed Tom out of town where their piebald plow-horse Arrow waited hitched to their only cart, tail flicking impatiently at evening flies. Chris fiddled with his plain coat all through the drive home, the woods dark and vibrant around the pool of light their spermaceti lantern gave them, animal eyes shining in the loam, between the shrubs and the trunks of ancient trees.

 

They got home well after dusk. Tom ushered Chris inside, before returning out to unhook Arrow and treat him to hot mash and a quick but thorough currying, before putting him away for the night. He came in and huffed out a breath in annoyance to find Chris standing in the dark, chores ignored. Tom lit a fire in the hearth, struck flint until the candles burned too in their sconces. Tom rubbed his hands briskly over the fire, and decided not to stoke one in the second hut tonight. He took the cold pasties he’d made earlier and slipped them into the hollow of the bread oven. They would warm in there, the gravy liquefying again, and fill the two men’s stomachs.

 

“We’ll go to Zürich,” Chris said, still sitting in the rocking chair Tom had pushed him into, his first words in a full day. His voice was rusty from anguish and disuse.

 

Tom snorted, wrapping a woolen blanket around Chris’ shoulders irritably. “Do you know German? And what will we do there? You're a Calvinist, and yet you do not believe in Puritan values. And I am neither Calvinist nor Puritan. Would you trade your persecution for mine? Besides, we have little coin, and we’d have to give up the plot of land and the bees.”

 

“There are bees in Switzerland.”

 

“Yes. But no space for a Catholic, nor for men of our disposition. You know as well as I do that it is better we be found here than in that hegemony.”

 

“Then I will renounce my fake Catholicism.” Chris’ voice was final.

 

Tom’s eyes turned gelid, like frost creeping over grass. “I will not lose you. If you renounce, I’ll claim to be Protestant too. We can die together.”

 

The whole hut seemed to freeze. Long shadows clung to the hollows of Tom’s cheekbones and the ridges of Hemsworth’s muscles. “You’d blackmail me with your life?” Chris growled, incensed.

 

“In a heartbeat, to save yours.”


End file.
